I Won't Dance

The thirties were a time of musicals. Maybe the Great Depression drove people to escape from reality and there's nothing more unreal than the musical genre. While the guys who used to put up skyscrapers are standing on breadlines, for a nickle you could watch chorus lines, extravagant costumes, and thinly defined plots reel out in black and white.

In 1934 one such musical came out in London. The Three Sisters, written by Jerome Kern and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, had only 72 performances. However, one of the songs featured in the play, I Won't Dance, was reused in the highly successful 1935 film Roberta. That version of the song, the one commonly sung thereafter, featured heavily revised lyrics by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh. Otto Harbach had had a hand in writing the lyrics for the original version with Hammerstein. Kern's music remained the same for the film rendition.

I Won't Dance originally was intended as a duet, portraying a dialogue between a woman and man, the former telling him what he is missing by not dancing with her, while the reluctant man gradually caves into her charms. The version of I Won't Dance I first encountered had been rewritten for solo vocalist and possibly the best known version is by Frank Sinatra. Regardless, I get swept away by the music and lyrics and find myself singing along (with various degrees of lyrical accuracy and little or no ability to carry a tune) every time I hear it.

I won't dance, don't ask me

I won't dance, don't ask me
I won't dance, Madame, with you

Say, you know what? You're lovely
You know what? You're lovely, but oh, what you do to me
I'm like an ocean wave that's bumped on the shore
I feel so absolutely stumped on the floor

When you dance you're charming and you're gentle
'Specially when you do the Continental
But this feeling isn't purely mental
For heaven rest us, I'm not asbestos

And that's why I won't dance, why should I?
I won't dance, how could I? I won't dance
Merci beau coup, I know that music leads the way to romance
So if I hold you in my arms I won't dance